TheRealTimeWeb.com: Flash Media Encoder 2.5 Released, Adds H.264 Encoding

Flash Media Encoder 2.5 Released, Adds H.264 Encoding

Posted by Stefan Richter in FMS, Tools | 48 Comments

Adobe have just released version 2.5 of the Flash Media Encoder, a free live video encoder which connects to Flash Media Server 3 or a compatible CDN to broadcast live Flash video streams in high quality.
Apart from H.264 support the software also supports the commercial AAC Audio Encoder Plug-in by MainConcept, rounding off the capability to deliver high quality live webcasts in Flash.

More details are available on the product page. I'm hoping to set up a sample stream sometime soon - I just need to wrap up half a dozen or so projects first ;-)

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Posted on April 14, 2008 at 12:40 PM. 19525 views. 48 comments. Print

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#1 by Andy on 4/14/08 - 3:11 PM

Anyone thats upgraded to FMS3 using FME? Just wondering if there are noticeable performance improvements with FMS3....whether it makes sense to upgrade.
#2 by thomas e. on 4/15/08 - 10:06 AM

Has anyone already tried the new h.264 codec in Flash Media Encoder?
Well, I have, and I must say the quality is quite awful.
Same goes for the Quicktime Broadcaster, I wonder why these tools produce such crappy videos.
My benchmark is - unforunately - Windows Media Encoder, which produces so much better video.
I would love to hear feedback from other users, as I would love to use live encoding with h.264....
#3 by Stefan Richter on 4/15/08 - 10:19 AM

I've tried it with good results. Maybe you could post some screenshots of yours?
#4 by Andy on 4/15/08 - 2:11 PM

While I haven't spent too much time playing with it, my initial impression was that if you have ample horsepower, your h.264 encoding would produce better results than VP6 for the same bitrate.
#5 by thomas e. on 4/15/08 - 10:28 PM

Andy, you for sure have a point here. Encoding in bigger resolutions does take more resources than my mighty old P830 Dual Core can handle...
On my machine, framerate on PAL size encoding goes down to 12fps... same thing as wmv9 takes about 30% processor load.
I will investigate further with lower resolutions.
Would love to hear other user's experiences...
#6 by cyberthugin4life on 4/21/08 - 2:52 AM

Does anyone know how to start it up, seems like the install does add a startup icon.
#7 by thomas e. on 4/24/08 - 7:27 PM

Oh my god!

I think I just found out a major drawback (at least for me) while testing the new FME with h.264.
It seems that it is NOT POSSIBLE to record H.264 streams on FMS 3. Looks like you only can record on the server when you stream with flv. What stupid thing is this? I still hope I am wrong, has anyone found out about this?
#8 by Stefan Richter on 4/24/08 - 7:44 PM

you are correct, you can currently not record in H.264 serverside. But FME can record it locally.
#9 by thomas e. on 4/24/08 - 8:42 PM

Well, thats very bad news. And really stupid from Adobe, I'd have to say. Any idea if this feature will be coming soon? And will the Wowza server be able to record h.264 server-side?
#10 by Stefan Richter on 4/24/08 - 8:46 PM

i'm confident they'll be adding this feature
#11 by thomas e. on 4/25/08 - 4:36 PM

Stefan,
do you have any idea in what timeframe this might happen?
Version 3.02, or more FMS 4.0....
#12 by Stefan Richter on 4/25/08 - 5:13 PM

sorry no idea. I hope it's soon.
#13 by twist on 5/21/08 - 11:17 AM

I hope that H264 recording feature will come soon. Why? because I use FMS to stop/record a stream that comes from FME and FME is running continuously. In other words I use FMS to control the record behaviour of the FME.
#14 by Jay on 6/16/08 - 1:44 PM

trying fme out trying to testing with flashwebtown.com when i try h264 got audio no video but works fine with VP6 get both video and audio any know were im going wrong
#15 by Stefan Richter on 6/16/08 - 2:09 PM

you get no video where? On the receiving SWF?
#16 by jay on 6/16/08 - 3:50 PM

no i can see the video and hear the sound in fme but when i try to watch the h.264 feed i can just hear the sound in flash media player no video just black screen when i stop fme change it to VP6 works perfect
#17 by Stefan Richter on 6/16/08 - 4:23 PM

so the video is missing from the SWF when you stream in H.264? OR what do you mean by Flash Media Player? Do you mean Flash Media Encoder?
#18 by jay on 6/16/08 - 4:38 PM

in the frash media encoder i can see the live video from the tv card in the preview output window when i try to watch the stream i got black video screen, but just try on another pc working but that running flash player 9,0115,0 but other pc laptop running 9,0124,0 then just showing audio no video
#19 by jay on 6/16/08 - 4:46 PM

might be easy this is the test stream rtmp://flashwebtown.com/live/streamtest
#20 by Stefan Richter on 6/16/08 - 4:55 PM

works great for me, but I am running 9.0.115

Maybe it's a bug with .124?

I think I'll watch this for a while :-)
#21 by Stefan Richter on 6/16/08 - 4:58 PM

sound's a bit out of sync - i will try and test with .124
#22 by jay on 6/16/08 - 5:01 PM

the pc running flash media enocder is 115 winder if that could be why 124 not working maybe that needs to have it aswell not sure cant seem to find 115 flash player download just the latest
#23 by Stefan Richter on 6/16/08 - 5:05 PM

no I doubt that's what's causing this. I just tested with the labs player 10.0.1.128 and I get no video on that one either.
Let's take this to email for now. Can you email me please?
stefan at flashcomguru dot com
#24 by Stefan Richter on 6/16/08 - 5:07 PM

one more thing - which server are you streaming over? Or which CDN?
#25 by Stefan Richter on 6/16/08 - 5:17 PM

urgh, I just had someone else test it for me and they couldn't play it with .115... go figure
#26 by TC on 6/24/08 - 2:50 AM

Jay, i had the same trouble. Found that 9.0.124 player update requires a FMS update to 3.0.1 in order in order to play h.264
#27 by thomas e. on 7/30/08 - 4:41 PM

Hi there,

while testing different encoding bitrates for live h.264 video, we encountered a strange problem:
Quality of h.264 video doesn't seem to change, even if we alter the bitrate quite dramastic.
Eg. 640x480 video looks quite the same, whether encoded with 350kbit or with 1000 kbit.
That can't be right, especially because the quality is always not great.
Any thoughts? Anybody can confirm this?

thanks
thomas
#28 by Stefan Richter on 7/30/08 - 8:44 PM

thomas, all I can confirm is that this is not the case for me. When I use a lower bitrate to encode H.264 (or any other codec) I get deteriorated quality.
#29 by thomas e. on 7/30/08 - 9:23 PM

thanks Stefan for your answer.
We did really extensive testing, and always have these strange results. For example, when the camera moves from one side to the other, it's never a smooth movement, even though the encoder says it does 25fps....
Same with picture quality: for a 720 size format, it doesn't matter if we encode with 600kbit or 1500kbit, quality stays mostly the same. Filesize of course increases accordingly, but not quality. Are there some hidden settings we can try (such as, how many I-frames etc.?)

Regards

thomas
#30 by Nikhil on 8/5/08 - 8:10 PM

Has anyone till date, has been able to encode h.264 with even a bad quality or still its not possible. I basically want to capture a video in H.264 through a Flash application and was wondering was it possible through this encoder.
#31 by thomas e. on 8/5/08 - 8:26 PM

with Flash Media Encoder 2.5, you can encode in h.264.
#32 by Nikhil on 8/13/08 - 7:36 PM

I was trying to use this encoder, but it asks me for a application path in the URL to be specified for streaming to the Flash media server. Does anyone have an idea what to use for the same and also which media server have you used?
#33 by Brian Randall on 10/22/08 - 5:34 AM

Hi There - can anybody tell me how we go about using flash media encoder 2.5 and flash media server 3 to capture, encode and broadcast multi bitrate streams?

We want offer both a high and low bit rate live streams being captured from the same camera at the same time.
#34 by Stefan Richter on 10/22/08 - 9:08 AM

Right now you would probably require multiple FME and multiple cams.
However Adobe have announced that an upcoming release of FMS will support multibitrate streaming and I am sure they will release the tools (such as an updated FME) to go with it.
#35 by Dave Branch on 10/28/08 - 5:57 PM

I've been working with the Flash Media Encoder 2.5 for a while to stream video to justin.tv . I have used various boxes and OS systems, using capture devices and virtual cam's playing local files.
Modes: VP6, 320x240 100kbps 25fps / NellyMoser, mono, 22050 Hz, 44kbps
(basically the lowest of any watchability)
Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = Perfect
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Perfect

Modes: H264, 320x240 100kbps 25fps / MP3, mono, 22050 Hz, 32kbps

Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = ONCE in a blue moon it will play with audio in sync. Rarely. Picture stutters occasionally. Leaning out the proc's gets a bit better, but cpu use maxes at 30%
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Perfect, but the audio sounds terrible at such a low rate.

Modes: H264, 320x240 100kbps 25fps / MP3, mono, 22050 Hz, 48kbps
Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = forget it, audio is way ahead.
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Either audio goes out of sync or the picture stutters often.

Modes: H264, 320x240 200kbps 25fps / MP3, mono, 22050 Hz, 32kbps
Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = Nice four or five frames a second.. They look nice, but you cant watch that way.
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Picture holds up, but again, such low end audio.

Synopsis, allow the mixing of other audio codecs with the .h264 video in .flv encaptured format?

Of course I see the obvious solution, buy a quad core, but I have a gut feeling (without knowing anything about the encapsulation limitations of .flv) that improvements will be made to the flash media encoder in the future.
The ceiling of priority seems to be 30 % cpu usuage even on my 800mhz dual P3.

Either way, impressive app, and right now, until vlc fixes its own .flv bugs, the best transcoder/streamer out there.
Almost makes you want to buy Adobe Flash CS4.
#36 by Kris on 6/8/09 - 8:52 PM

We use FME to encode streams from IP cameras. I've been running into a little trouble that I hope someone else may have a resolution for.

The CPU runs consistently at 80-90% to encode the stream. The machine is running XP Pro with Dual Core Pentium 1.8GHz and 2Gig Ram. I've tried the encoding on other machines with similar processing power and have the same results. But that's not my problem.

The problem is that after 12-15 hours of steady encoding the encoder starts to lag drastically and eventually get to the point where I have to manually restart the application to refresh it and get it working again. Is there a cache that's filling up or something? Any ideas will greatly help me figure this out.
#37 by Stefan Richter on 6/9/09 - 12:39 PM

here's some info I got directly from Adobe:

In FME we don?t suggest users to use a setting or machine in which CPU usage of machine goes above 75%.
H264 encoder takes little more time in encoding frames because of its high compression rate. If machine is slow then this time tends to increase gradually and you will start seeing noticeable lag between Input and Output streams.

In order to reduce this gap please use higher configuration machine like 4 core machine.
If you are using H264 Main then try using H264 base profile because H264 Main profile takes more CPU and gives high quality output.

Also I will suggest you to please use latest version of FMLE which is 3.0.1 in which we have done little more optimization in time of encoding.
#38 by neha on 6/9/09 - 12:47 PM

I am here to join Flash media live encoder posts
#39 by Kris on 6/9/09 - 8:16 PM

It was recommended I use FME v3 instead of v2.5. I am encoding a video stream from an Axis IP device that FME v3 does not recognize as a valid video source. I'm forced to use v2.5.

Here are the settings I'm using that give me the quality I want. These settings pin the CPU at around 70-80% and the encoding more or less stalls completely after l2 hours or less.

Device: Axis Media Capture Driver
Format: H.264 or VP6 (same result with either)
Bit Rate: 350
Size: 640x480
FPS: 15 (30 gives same result)
Audio: MP3, Mono, 22050Hz, 48 kbps
I DO NOT save to a .flv file

If I can change anything to get FME to encode continuously and smoothly for weeks without rebooting, that's my goal.
#40 by neha on 6/10/09 - 6:27 AM

Hi Kris,
Please try with FMLE 3.0.1. Also if possible please send me FMLE session logs and FMLE log file. To enable logging please follow following steps:
1. Goto Installation directory of FMLE i.e. "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Live Encoder 3".
2. Open conf\config.xml file.
3/ Change value of Logs tag to true as
<logs>
<enable>true</enable>
<path></path>
</logs>
4. Save the changes.
5. Then launch FMLE.
6. Start encoding.
7. Wait till the time issue occurs.
8. Stop Encoding and close FMLE.
9. GoTo "My Videos" folder
10. Send me stats folder and latest FMLEsession log file to my email neha@adobe.com

Thanks,
Neha
#41 by Kris on 6/10/09 - 4:36 PM

I loaded v3.01 like you requested. I enabled logging. In the configuration screen I see my video stream in the preview windows at the top of the screen, but when I click 'Start Encoding' button nothing shows up in the right 'encoded' preview window and also no bits are being encoded in status section. That's why I'm using v2.5 because v3 doesn't work with my source stream for some reason. The source is from an Axis IP video device that uses the Axis MJPEG Capture Driver.
#42 by Kris on 6/10/09 - 4:47 PM

Here's a few log entries that show that v3 isn't working correctly.

Wed Jun 10 2009 08:43:23 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:43:23 : Audio Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Unexpected error encountered in encoding process.
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Audio Encoding Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Session Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Unpublish.Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Disconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Connected to FMS/3,0,2,217
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Network Command: onBWDone
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Publish.Start
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Audio Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Unexpected error encountered in encoding process.
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Audio Encoding Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Session Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Unpublish.Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Primary - Disconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Connected to FMS/3,0,2,217
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Network Command: onBWDone
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Publish.Start
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Audio Encoding Started
#43 by Kris on 6/10/09 - 7:07 PM

Here's another error log.

Wed Jun 10 2009 10:01:10 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:01:10 : Video Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:01:10 : Audio Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:20:50 : Encoding and streaming to server is stopped due to a problem in capturing audio/video data. Either the capture device is removed or there is an error in encoding process. Restarting the encoding session.
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:36 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.IdleTimeOut status Client 6152860803772790103 has been idle for 346 seconds.
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:36 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:36 : Primary - Disconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:45 : Primary - Reestablishing connection, try 1
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:45 : Primary - Reconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:30:37 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.IdleTimeOut status Client 7594275648333572461 has been idle for 352 seconds.
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:30:38 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
#44 by neha on 6/11/09 - 6:47 AM

Hi Kris,

Is this last error occurred in FMLE 2.5?

One of the reason for this error is:

FMLE is taking long time to encode Video packets that audio packets because of low available processing power of system.

Please try this on higher configuration machine.

Regards,
Neha
#45 by neha on 6/11/09 - 8:23 AM

Hi kris,

I need your help in order to isolate issue further.

Please send me FMLE detail debug logs also with both FMLE 3.0 and FMLE 2.5
Steps to create Debug logs:

1. Goto Installation directory of FMLE i.e. "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Live Encoder 3".
2. Open conf\config.xml file.
3/ Change value of Logs tag to true as
<logs>
<enable>true</enable>
<path></path>
</logs>
4. Save the changes.
5. Then launch FMLE.
6. Start encoding.
7. Wait till the time issue occurs.
8. Stop Encoding and close FMLE.
9. GoTo "My Videos" folder
10. Send me stats folder.

Thanks a lot for your cooperation.

Regards,
Neha
#46 by john church on 9/2/09 - 10:37 PM

IS THERE ANY WAY TO STREAM VIDEO STRAIGHT FROM THE HARD DRIVE USING FLASH MEDIA ENCODER 2.5
#47 by Mihai on 11/12/09 - 2:22 AM

"Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Unexpected error encountered in encoding process."

Hi Kris,
I m having the same problem with my Mobotix M22 Ip cam as video source and an on bord Realtek Ac97 sound board.
I use for ip camera drive a filter from webcam xp application(found on internet). Although I'm haveing an Athlon Xp 3800+ 64b I m getting the same encoding problem.
First I ve tried to resolve it by decreasing audio quality from 44100 to 22050 at 15 fps video. Some time it worked but CPU was over 75 to 90 %. Most of the time Media Encoder 3 crashed.
Then I ve decresed the fps to 10fps and kept the audio quality at 22050 with 48. It started to work a little bit smoother but 5 of 10 times it crashed.
The only setting that worked for me was 8fps and 44100 at 56.I didn't get till now any errors. Of course this works just fine for me as I'm broadcasting a video stream from a club and I don't need real time fps.
SO in conclusion I think the problem is slow CPU power vs higher processing trough an ip cam filer like axis(youre case) or webcamxp in mine case.
#48 by dryke on 8/10/10 - 4:14 PM

i want to store the details of encoding
Statistics like publishing details and encoding details.how can i do that